Clarity
by Savendia
Summary: Tag to When the Levee Breaks. Turns out, there's more than one Hell.


Hey all. So. I just saw When the Levee Breaks and Lucifer Rising. (No season 5 yet... I've ordered the DVDs, though! I'm so excited!) I loved these episodes so much... but I hated them so much... Sam and Dean quite literally at each other's throats? I never thought it was possible. Never in a million years. I mean, things were bad, but I actually had a moment of "ohmygodSam'sREALLYgoingtokillDean!" It nearly killed _me_! I had to do something with all my rage and sadness that something so impossible could happen. Hence this. Advance apologies for lack of anything like a plot. Or, for that matter, a _point_. :D

Disclaimer: If they were mine, they would remember how much they loved each other instead of trying to KILL each other!

* * *

There could be no worse Hell than Hell. It was the comparison basis for all other Hells, and they all fell short. Nothing could be as vicious, as merciless, as evilly inventive as the twisted minds who had ruled below for a million years.

Dean had been in Hell. He'd thought he'd been in Hell before. When Dad died. When Sammy left. Every fucking time he'd been slammed into walls and dragged through broken glass and shot and stabbed and burned until he just couldn't _take it_…

None of that compared to Hell.

He thought he'd been in pain before. He'd been tortured before, and he knew the feeling of dread certainty; pain was coming. He'd looked into the grinning faces of demons and known that his blood would stain the ground before the minute was through. He'd stared with a sick detachment at white shards of bone that should belong to him but were, mysteriously, on the outside of his body.

There was torture in Hell, too. The only difference was that there were no words to describe that pain.

Sam could never understand, and that was good. Little Sammy, sounding out road signs in his halting baby voice as they flew by, whispering silly secrets into Dean's ear, carefully splitting the last cookie down the middle to share; he could never understand Hell because if he did, all Dean's work and sacrifice would be for nothing.

It was so selfish. Dean didn't care. If nothing but his own selfish need for self-justification kept Sammy safe, so be it. The means were nothing to the end. If he pushed Sammy away, if jobs remained uncompleted and people unsaved, if there were angry words and silent car rides and hurt feelings, so be it. Anything could be justified to keep Sam safe.

Even if it meant he had to leave Sam alone. Even if it meant going to Hell; nothing was too much or too far.

Dean had never expected to come back. He had expected Sam to grieve and move on, get himself a place at law school and another girlfriend, a degree, a job, a home and a family, the normality little Sammy had always craved.

And yet, here he was, breathing sulfur-free air for the first time in forty years. _Breathing_ for the first time in forty years. Pulled right from the pit… into another pit; the shallower hole of his own grave.

He had expected things to be different. He was back from the dead and damned, that sure came with some emotional baggage for everyone involved. He had expected the shock, the disbelief, and even the tears.

What he had not expected was… Sam.

He had not expected, nor had he recognized the look in Sam's eyes because it was a look that Sammy would never have had. He had not recognized the secrets Sam was keeping, because Sammy trusted his big brother with everything. And because Sammy had become so much Sam, Dean never understood his inexplicable trust in a demon, because it was something only Sammy would have done.

They were both changed. Somewhere inside of him, Dean knew Sam was right to call him weak. He wasn't invincible anymore. He could be broken; he had been broken and God help him but he hadn't cared. If it happened once, it could happen again. Next time, it could be worse. Next time, the helpless soul they placed before him could be more than some poor, gibbering anonymous bastard. Next time it could be someone he loved, it could be Sam. If they had placed Sammy's soul, bound and vulnerable before him, would he have noticed? Would he have cared?

The truly terrifying part, the final proof of Hell's lasting impact, was that Dean Winchester honestly did not know.

And if Dean Winchester could honestly contemplate harming his little brother, then things had gone too far.

If Dean Winchester could find himself on the floor, little Sammy's long fingers pressed into his throat and eyes dark with hatred, then things had gone beyond too far and crossed into the realm of _no fucking way_.

Now, Dean stood at Bobby's window, faced away from the light. Even the slight reflection of the glass was enough to show the light blue bruises circling his throat. His head hurt, his body ached.

He had failed; he knew that now. He had failed because he had been wrong – Sammy knew nothing of Hell, but Sam knew everything. Sam had lived and breathed Hell for every second that Dean had. Sam had screamed and screamed for help until he had run out of screams, and no one had been around to answer. It was no wonder at all that he could not trust Dean; Dean had broken the one promise that meant the world to little Sammy who drew stick figures in twos and wanted a hand with which to cross the road and a lap to sleep in.

Dean paced Bobby's floor with weak steps. He was so ignorant. He was so blind. So caught up in his own pain and guilt that he'd failed to see Sam's, and so he had failed in the single most important task he had ever been given.

Sam had been through Hell, but unlike Dean he hadn't had an angel to pull him back. Sam suffered silently every day, his voice too hoarse to scream anymore, his body intact but his soul bleeding.

And it was all Dean's fault.


End file.
